Education has always been central to the American Dream: the promise that if you work hard, you can achieve anything. Unfortunately, the skyrocketing cost of student loan debt means that when millions of Americans should be building their careers, starting their families, and pursuing their dreams, they are instead being held back.

Let's make an even greater investment in the Pell Grant program. And let's eradicate labor market inequalities that reward white high school dropouts with greater access to jobs than black graduates with a community college degree.

There was a time when you couldn't go to high school for free in the U.S. If you wanted education beyond the eighth grade, you'd have to find a school and pay for it. After all, what was the point of free, universal high school if most kids ended up on the farm or in the factory?

Currently, we have only a few of the specifics, and this week I will write about: what I do know about the proposal; the need for more particulars; arguments in favor of, and in opposition to, the proposal; and an alternative proposal.

The President has introduced only the grand idea of providing tuition-free education for all students attending community colleges, an idea which, at first glance, seems to have great merit. But at this point we know very few details.

Unlike the devastating effects on prison education, the law's penal outcomes are less certain. There is little doubt that high recidivism rates across the country continue to impact public safety negatively with new offenses and new social harms.

In principle, Saturday's vote to keep the government open should be the perfect curtain-raiser for the political debates between now and the 2016 election. As their price for averting a government shutdown, Republicans demanded and got a gutting of one of the most important provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act, preventing banks from speculating with government insured money. Agencies hated by Republicans such as the Environmental Protection Agency took big cuts, and a rider was inserted permitting "mountaintop removal" coal mining once again. Another extraneous provision demanded by conservatives permits massive increase in individual campaign contributions. Far worse will be directed at ordinary working families when the new Congress meets in January.

Over the past two months, my team at Significance Labs has investigated how and why first generation community college students in New York City start to run into trouble. We confirmed that there are a plethora of barriers which prevent first generation students from earning a degree.

Over 73 million adults have a college degree in this country, but less than 2 million of them are members of the One Percent. Most earn less than a fifth of what they'd need to qualify for the One Percent.

These disproportionate cuts -- which likely account for at least $3.3 trillion of the budget's $4.8 trillion in non-defense cuts over the next decade -- contrast sharply with the budget's rhetoric about helping the poor and promoting opportunity.

Are we that far off from our own American oligarchy, our own American nightmare, when our children, who have few voices in Washington, continue to be ignored? And what business do businessmen have telling teachers how to teach?

I fully expect the educational results for the 2008 cohorts to be a mirror of the financial trauma they and our nation experienced and that many of our most vulnerable citizens still know all too well today.

We need to make it easier for community college students to enroll and get a degree by making sure that whether they enroll for twelve credit hours or fifteen that a Pell Grant will provide a financial safety net covering most of their expenses.

Many have proposed improving the federal student loan program to make it simpler, more targeted, and more effective, and it no doubt could be. Nevertheless, the student loan program as it stands is a good deal for both students and the government.

Brave as it is to suggest changes in a cow so sacred as the Pell, the College Board needs to go further. To succeed, the plan must promote a strong role for families to save, learn, and take control of their own college process.

College may be a year away, but scholarship and loan application deadlines are just around the corner. And, if you haven't been down this path recently, you'll soon learn that there are tons of decisions to make and documents to fill out.